The invention herein disclosed and claimed pertains generally to apparatus for graphically representing characters encoded in a digital signal, and more particularly pertains to such apparatus wherein the characters in the digital signal comprise information related to graphically represented data.
It is common practice to record data, for example, data obtained from sonar equipment tracking a target, by employing a recording system in which a stylus or other writing element sweeps across recording paper or other medium in generally linear fashion at selected intervals, the paper moving in a direction orthogonal to the motion of the stylus. Various means are presently available for use with these types of recording systems for recording timing or other information related to the data, upon the same recording medium, by selectively controlling successive linear sweeps of the stylus. Such means may be employed, for example, to imprint timing information along side recorded data to show a relative comparison between the times at which different data was recorded. Some of such means, however, may not be structured to show real time, the time at which recorded data actually was obtained. Other of such means may comprise relatively complicated arrangements of digital memories and storage circuits. Such presently available means may also be unadaptable for use generally as a digital to graphic character generator, which receives characters in digital form and represents them in graphic form, the characters having no relation to any data information.